One has to take into consideration the Melongeon influence on the population. Many who came "over the Avery" (the trail through NC and East Tenn that is now US 70 and I-40) included them. They settled first in northern Alabama, Mississippi and East and Middle-Tenn. After the Civil War, a number migrated to Texas.
I always thought when I heard someone from the Panhandle or the Red River talk about having a "Cherokee grandma" it was just as likely they had a Melongeon ancestor.
I had a girlfriend from the Panhandle who looks Scots-Irish but with olive skin. People thought she was Jewish. I have olive skin and when I was in India, the locals though I was an Anglo-Indian from Delhi.
Not that these observations have much to do with speech patterns, but it explains a little about who many Texans are.
The Melungeon "hearth" in southwestern Virginia and adjacent areas of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky lies just south of the Upper Southern homeland of the Shenandoah Valley. While the Melungeons may have suffered discrimination in Appalachia, most of that was lost when they migrated westward. Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln were both partially of Melugeon ancestry.
In the last Texas governor's race, the "white" Republican candidate, Rick Perry (BTW, isn't Perry a common Melungeon name?) was darker complected than the "minority" Democrat candidate, Tony Sanchez, who was very obviously of the Caucasian race, with fair skin, blue eyes, and, at a younger age, light brown hair.
Where the Melungeons came from has never been settled. I have heard that Tay-Sachs disease, a marker of Jewish ethnicity, has been found among them. One particular Melungeon could have been used as a body double for Sadaam Hussein. Tay-Sachs disease has also been found among the Pennsylvania Dutch. There is the belief that some of the Amish and Mennonites may have been converted Jews. The scene in the movie "Witness" where the Amish boy, lost in the Philadelphia train station, finds a Hassidic Jew, thinking him to be a fellow Amishman, may be less ironic than the movie's producers thought.
You're the only other person I've seen write about the Melungeons outside of a genealogical site. Have they figured (now that's a good Texan word) out where they originated? One family surname group was doing DNA testing with some ideas they may have been middle eastern but hadn't heard results in the last couple years. Freepmail me.
Aha, Jim's spell check is lacking "Melungeon".
I thought the Melongeons were blue.